dialog

Display native system dialogs for opening and saving files, alerting, etc.

Process: Main

An example of showing a dialog to select multiple files and directories:

const {dialog} = require('electron')
console.log(dialog.showOpenDialog({properties: ['openFile', 'openDirectory', 'multiSelections']}))

The Dialog is opened from Electron's main thread. If you want to use the dialog object from a renderer process, remember to access it using the remote:

const {dialog} = require('electron').remote
console.log(dialog)

Methods

The dialog module has the following methods:

dialog.showOpenDialog([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

• browserWindow BrowserWindow (optional)
• options Object
  • title String (optional)
  • defaultPath String (optional)
  • buttonLabel String (optional) - Custom label for the confirmation button, when left empty the default label will be used.
  • filters FileFilter[] (optional)
  • properties String[] (optional) - Contains which features the dialog should use. The following values are supported:
    • openFile - Allow files to be selected.
    • openDirectory - Allow directories to be selected.
    • multiSelections - Allow multiple paths to be selected.
    • showHiddenFiles - Show hidden files in dialog.
    • createDirectory - Allow creating new directories from dialog. macOS
    • promptToCreate - Prompt for creation if the file path entered in the dialog does not exist. This does not actually create the file at the path but allows non-existent paths to be returned that should be created by the application. Windows
    • noResolveAliases - Disable the automatic alias (symlink) path resolution. Selected aliases will now return the alias path instead of their target path. macOS
  • normalizeAccessKeys Boolean (optional) - Normalize the keyboard access keys across platforms. Default is false. Enabling this assumes & is used in the button labels for the placement of the keyboard shortcut access key and labels will be converted so they work correctly on each platform, & characters are removed on macOS, converted to _ on Linux, and left untouched on Windows. For example, a button label of Vie&w will be converted to Vie_w on Linux and View on macOS and can be selected via Alt-W on Windows and Linux.
    • message String (optional) macOS - Message to display above input boxes.
• callback Function (optional)
  • filePaths String[] - An array of file paths chosen by the user

Returns String[], an array of file paths chosen by the user, if the callback is provided it returns undefined.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

The filters specifies an array of file types that can be displayed or selected when you want to limit the user to a specific type. For example:

{
  filters: [
    {name: 'Images', extensions: ['jpg', 'png', 'gif']},
    {name: 'Movies', extensions: ['mkv', 'avi', 'mp4']},
    {name: 'Custom File Type', extensions: ['as']},
    {name: 'All Files', extensions: ['*']}
  ]
}

The extensions array should contain extensions without wildcards or dots (e.g. 'png' is good but '.png' and '*.png' are bad). To show all files, use the '*' wildcard (no other wildcard is supported).

If a callback is passed, the API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(filenames)

Note: On Windows and Linux an open dialog can not be both a file selector and a directory selector, so if you set properties to ['openFile', 'openDirectory'] on these platforms, a directory selector will be shown.

dialog.showSaveDialog([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

• browserWindow BrowserWindow (optional)
• options Object
  • title String (optional)
  • defaultPath String (optional)
  • buttonLabel String (optional) - Custom label for the confirmation button, when left empty the default label will be used.
  • filters FileFilter[] (optional)
  • message String (optional) macOS - Message to display above text fields.
  • nameFieldLabel String (optional) macOS - Custom label for the text displayed in front of the filename text field.
  • showsTagField Boolean (optional) macOS - Show the tags input box, defaults to true.
• callback Function (optional)
  • filename String

Returns String, the path of the file chosen by the user, if a callback is provided it returns undefined.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

The filters specifies an array of file types that can be displayed, see dialog.showOpenDialog for an example.

If a callback is passed, the API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(filename)

dialog.showMessageBox([browserWindow, ]options[, callback])

• browserWindow BrowserWindow (optional)
• options Object
  • type String (optional) - Can be "none", "info", "error", "question" or "warning". On Windows, "question" displays the same icon as "info", unless you set an icon using the "icon" option.
  • buttons String[] (optional) - Array of texts for buttons. On Windows, an empty array will result in one button labeled "OK".
  • defaultId Integer (optional) - Index of the button in the buttons array which will be selected by default when the message box opens.
  • title String (optional) - Title of the message box, some platforms will not show it.
  • message String - Content of the message box.
  • detail String (optional) - Extra information of the message.
  • checkboxLabel String (optional) - If provided, the message box will include a checkbox with the given label. The checkbox state can be inspected only when using callback.
  • checkboxChecked Boolean (optional) - Initial checked state of the checkbox. false by default.
  • icon NativeImage (optional)
  • cancelId Integer (optional) - The index of the button to be used to cancel the dialog, via the Esc key. By default this is assigned to the first button with "cancel" or "no" as the label. If no such labeled buttons exist and this option is not set, 0 will be used as the return value or callback response. This option is ignored on Windows.
  • noLink Boolean (optional) - On Windows Electron will try to figure out which one of the buttons are common buttons (like "Cancel" or "Yes"), and show the others as command links in the dialog. This can make the dialog appear in the style of modern Windows apps. If you don't like this behavior, you can set noLink to true.
• callback Function (optional)
  • response Number - The index of the button that was clicked
  • checkboxChecked Boolean - The checked state of the checkbox if checkboxLabel was set. Otherwise false.

Returns Integer, the index of the clicked button, if a callback is provided it returns undefined.

Shows a message box, it will block the process until the message box is closed. It returns the index of the clicked button.

The browserWindow argument allows the dialog to attach itself to a parent window, making it modal.

If a callback is passed, the API call will be asynchronous and the result will be passed via callback(response).

dialog.showErrorBox(title, content)

• title String - The title to display in the error box
• content String - The text content to display in the error box

Displays a modal dialog that shows an error message.

This API can be called safely before the ready event the app module emits, it is usually used to report errors in early stage of startup. If called before the app readyevent on Linux, the message will be emitted to stderr, and no GUI dialog will appear.

Sheets

On macOS, dialogs are presented as sheets attached to a window if you provide a BrowserWindow reference in the browserWindow parameter, or modals if no window is provided.

You can call BrowserWindow.getCurrentWindow().setSheetOffset(offset) to change the offset from the window frame where sheets are attached.